Adolph Hitler’s favorite filmmaker meets the man who made animated movie stars of Snow White, Pinocchio, and Bambi in Tom Jacobson‘s Crevasse, a fascinating, stunningly staged co-production of Son of Semele and The Victory Theatre Center.

The director in question is Leni Riefenstahl, best known for her 1930s Nazi propaganda films Triumph Of The Will and Olympia.

No introduction should be necessary for Walt Disney, except to say that at the time of his meeting with Riefenstahl at Disney Studios, Olympia has recently beaten Snow White at the Venice Film Festival, its victory prompting Leni to visit Tinseltown in hopes of securing American distribution of her groundbreaking documentary account of the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

And things seem to be going well for Leni (Ann Noble) upon her arrival, her film critic/publicist friend Ernst Jaeger (Leo Marks) having secured her a dozen appointments with such Hollywood moguls as MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, Warner Brothers’ Jack L. Warner, and 20th Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck, to name just a few.

Then comes news of Kristallnacht and before you can say persona non grata, every single meeting has been canceled except the one with Walt, the only non-Jewish studio head in town.

It doesn’t take long for the two filmmakers to discover how much they have in common.

Not only did they both drop out of school to pursue their art, they have both created film masterpieces, albeit in different genres. (“You show the world as it is,” Walt tells Leni. “I show the world as I want it to be.”)

Leni’s tour of Disney studios has Walt describing in detail his plans for an animated feature that would bring such classical music opuses as “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “The Night On Bald Mountain” to animated life, i.e., Fantasia, a title that, if we are to believe Crevasse, Leni came up with herself.

He also gives her a demonstration of the post-production sound effect technique known as Foley, which if Crevasse is to be believed, the Germans call Geräuschkulisseneinfügungsgerät.

Not only does Walt get Leni to model for the cartoon character children around the world will soon know as Pinocchio’s Blue Fairy, if we are to believe Crevasse, Leni gives Walt the key to making Bambi’s most devastating sequence work to maximum effect.

Last but not least, she offers Walt a business deal that, as far as Leni is concerned, only a fool would turn down.

Surrounding Crevasse’s Technicolor mid-section are monochromatically designed scenes that reveal the reality faced not just by European Jews, but by anyone connected with them either by blood or by law, e.g. Ernst, whose wife Lotte is of Jewish heritage as is the couple’s young son.

Playwright Jacobson gives us Walt Disney and Leni Riefenstahl in all their complexities and contradictions. (Did Nazi ideology appeal to all-American Walt? Was Leni an anti-Semite or did she maneuver behind the scenes to help her Jewish friends?)

Both Noble (in her most glamorous, seductive, and comedic role in years) and Marks (homespun perfection as Walt) are on fire under Matthew McCray’s inspired direction.

Not only that but the busy L.A. stage stars get to tackle two additional roles each, Marks as the vulnerable Ernst and the serpentine Goebbels and Noble as the complex, pragmatic Lotte and a butch government agent known only as “the FBI lesbian.”

Scenic designer Evan Bartoletti uses satiny curtains and sliding/revolving panels to inventive effect, a design complemented by Azra King-Abadi’s stark-turned-vibrant lighting, Michael Mullen’s period-perfect costumes, and Nicholas Santiago’s Disneyesque animated projections, all of the above moving from monochrome to color and then back to black-and-white, with additional design kudos to John Zalewski for his dramatic sound design and Amanda Zarr for her just right props.

Crevasse is produced by Maria Gobetti and McCray. Fiona Barrows is assistant director. Erin Newsom is stage manager. Lucy Pollak is publicist.

A fascinating glimpse back at Hollywood and Europe in the days leading up to World War II, and an elucidating look at two film-making pioneers, Tom Jacobson’s Crevasse is all this and more. Get ready to be mesmerized.

The Victory Theatre Center, 3326 West Victory Blvd., Burbank.
Note: Crevasse returns to the Victory from October 3  to 27.
www.thevictorytheatrecenter.org

–Steven Stanley
July 26, 2024
Photos: Matt Kamimura

Tags: Los Angeles Theater Review, Son Of Semele, The Victory Theatre Center, Tom Jacobson